


What Was, What Is

by Capella



Series: Adventures of the Sunfall Legacy [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Flashback Sequence, Gen, Imperial Reclamation Service
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capella/pseuds/Capella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She is two beings, has been ever since Dxun; a real person, wrapped in a ghost that strangles.</i>
</p>
<p>How long does it take to move on from losing your dream and your friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was, What Is

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short piece about my Sith warrior, Auriva, getting caught up in bad memories of her past. Specifically, the loss of her Imperial Reclamation Service team and her own brush with death.
> 
> If you want to know more about Auriva, check out [her tag](http://catpella.tumblr.com/tagged/auriva) on Tumblr.

Her current panic is all the Darth’s fault. She’d been too terrified to lie completely, a little too drunk to filter what she said. Too much of the truth slipped out when she spoke to him, down to her old squad number - a piece of verisimilitude that he could check easily. And then he’d find out that she had been in the Reclamation Service, but that had been years ago, with a squad that no longer existed. Damn her mouth and damn her fear! When a high-ranking Darth found out she’d not been entirely honest with him…

Damn, damn, damn.

If she was just a regular member of the Reclamation Service, she probably wouldn't be in this mess. But if she was just a regular member, she would never have met her current good friends. Probably would never have run into many Sith. Might have had a prominent academic career… more probably, would have been dead years ago.

She recognizes this obsessive, hopeless tone of her thoughts, understands what’s going on. On some level, she’s known this was coming ever since she mentioned her squad’s number. Since then she’s been picturing their faces when she closes her eyes, or doing a double-take thinking she’s seen one of them in a crowd. The agitation inside her swells and rises, spikes of fear unbecoming of a Sith roiling through her. No matter how much she wants to, she can’t stop the flashbacks from coming.

Auriva has enough presence of mind to curl against the wall of the refresher, forehead against the cool metal in the vain hope that the physical chill will provide some relief from the internal storm. Her eyes are open, but she is unseeing of the world, caught up in the nightmares and memories within herself. Her lips move, whispering the same few words over and over again. Is it a mantra against fear, or a sign she’s giving into it?

Twelve names are carved into her soul.

Her right hand rubs her ankle repeatedly, tracing the bones that feel misshapen, catching for a moment on the scar tissue, moving up to feel the numbers inked into her skin, then back down to the bones again. It’s an unconscious move she’s been doing for minutes, hours, however long she’s been alone in here with her thoughts. Her once-shattered ankle, her fire-scarred leg, the tattoo she received, after - the marks of where she’s been.

_The tomb air is clouded by dust and smoke and little flecks of charred flesh. It clogs her nose and coats her mouth as she struggles to breathe underneath the crushing weight of stone. The light is dim and flickering, cast by flames in the distance. It’s been getting brighter, which means closer. She knows there’s no way she can escape it if it reaches her. Somewhere in the distance she hears an anguished moaning, punctuated by short cries for help - Keighlah, maybe. She can’t do anything for them, and the helplessness drives her mad. If she could just get free-!_

_"YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME!"_

_The roar is impossibly loud, echoing around the chamber and through the halls._

_There’s an eerie high wailing sound echoing around the tomb. A tromping sound like heavy footsteps echoes,_ pound-pound pound-pound. _Metal clinking into metal accompanies it. She hears it stop. Suddenly there’s a sound she doesn't recognize and a_ thump _, and the moaning stops. The sound of steps resumes, coming closer. A palpable aura of dread is weighing everything down. She closes her eyes and tries to stop breathing, tries to will herself dead. She knows if whatever it is sees her still alive, it’ll do to her what it did to Keighlah. If given a choice between the fire or the monster, she thinks she’d rather the fire…_

Her fingers catch on the scarred part of her leg, jerking her out of memories and back to her physical body. Her breath is coming in rapid pants and her hands are shaking. It takes a few moments before she processes the sensations actually around her, as opposed to the ones in her head; to register that the ship air is cool and smells of grease and sweat and metal, not hot and smelling of smoke and char, to realize that she’s sitting inside of metal, not stone.

She’s on a ship, safe.

Except she’s still on Dxun, even now.

_That’s_ the secret she doesn't share with anyone. At first, because she thought it was temporary. She was assured by the Reclamation psychologists - the last time she saw them, right before they pronounced her fit for Korriban and shipped her off - that her preoccupation with the place was a natural consequence of a near-death experience. _In time,_ they said, _it would fade._

But it never did. 

No matter where she is or what she’s doing, there’s always a part of her pinned under a concrete pillar in a burning tomb, playing dead as Death passes by.

Then she’d gone to Korriban, not exactly the best place to go to heal from trauma. But she’s survived it, become a Sith apprentice. Even if she dies at this rank, she’s survived what many others would have fallen to. She once told Lord Pavisel it was because she faced her final trial before she even got there.

She knows if she tells anyone that she still lives tethered to the place where she died now, people will change how they think about her. They’ll think she’s crazy for referring to her death as though it happened already, that she’s damaged and unable to move on, or they’ll tell her she’s trapped in a prison of her own fear and unworthy of being a Sith and then they will kill her.

(She knows this already. That is why she hides from more powerful Sith - she fears they can see through her pretensions of competence.)

"Who will take someone small and ineffectual seriously?" Pavisel once told her after she asked about his quirks. "Display enough of your true self to deceive them into thinking that’s all you are - then knife them in the back with the power you masked." She’s taken the lesson to heart. Be who she was as 18, and no one will look twice. Just another apprentice Sith, they’re part of the decor that lines the walls of the halls of power. She’s lasted 7 years like that.

She has this illusion of self that she’s woven over the years. The surface facade is of a Sith with ambitionless diffidence, useful to have around but not worth killing as a potential threat. The deeper claim is that she’s “just any old Imperial girl”. This story she enfolds around herself, so often reflexively spouted that she actively denies that there’s anything else to her - that there could be.

She is two beings, has been ever since Dxun; a real person, wrapped in a ghost that strangles.

The problem is that she wants to be an Imperial scholar. She wants it so badly that she burrows into that identity and shelters within its comfort, even though it’s a coat that’s too small, a shoe that doesn't fit. She has outgrown it now, passed through a gauntlet of fire and stone and ancient halls and monsters scathed but triumphant. She has become larger than her past self can contain, but she still holds onto it because it is familiar, safe, and because she does not wish to acknowledge that she is more than that.

The scholar-girl she was at 18 haunts Auriva, a shadow living under her skin, sometimes visible in her reflection or in her words. As long as the shadow still has rein, the part of her that is Sith finds itself stifled. Sometimes a situation comes up where Auriva wants to say two things: what she would have said, then, and what she would say, now. (She defers to her past-self more often than not, justifies it as an act of resistance, denies that it’s rooted in fear.)

Fear of the Sith and what they can do has always been a part of her life, like with any other reasonable Imperial. Better to deny the powers growing within her than to embrace them. She is the only one left standing of 936, the only one who can name their names and remember their faces. To let herself become the thing that destroyed them feels like a betrayal, like she’s dishonoring her role as their living witness.

But at the same time -

She’s spent 7 years running away from what she is now, in an attempt to cling to what she was, all the while telling herself she was doing it for them. Is this what they would have wanted for her, skating by and pretending she was nothing? She bows her head to look at her leg and runs her fingers along the tattoo again, but this time it’s not an unconscious act. She traces the numbers, picturing her colleagues one by one as she does so. This time it doesn't hurt, not like the memories that were clawing at her less than a half hour ago.

The last she remembers is Keighlah, with his dark skin and ready smile. She can hear his baritone in her head telling her to become a lord and get them some real funding, and it makes her smile for the first time since she woke up. He was always like her big brother, and thinking about the various ways he would have yelled at her helps her laugh, which helps her calm down.

She’s sufficiently tired at this point that the idea of getting up from the floor of the shower is overwhelming. _Just a few minutes,_ she thinks as she closes her eyes. _Just a few more and then I’ll get back in bed…_


End file.
